Everyday Shepherd

Time rarely moves slowly anymore. It seems that in our swirling modern world of social media and instantaneous everything, hours tick away and they are gone. That has not proven to be the case for us in our first couple weeks in the Siouxland.  Our days have been full of the same issues that any new family has when moving into a new city. We have had to find the post office, Laundromat, and power company—knowledge of streets and directions sort of come from learning the necessities. During the process of getting settled, all three of us have been able to do the one thing that slows life to a beautiful pace—conversations. Students, barbers, ministry leaders, believers, atheists, agnostics, angry and content have been some of the categories that one could put on our new friends in West Central Iowa. We have been able to learn about our fair city, some of the deep struggles of her citizens and share the gospel with some of them.

The challenge for us is how to make friends from our ever increasing community of relationships. Thankfully, we have seen some imperfect success by utilizing a thoughtful strategy by Michael Frost called BELLS. The acronym (Be Generous, Eat, Learn Christ, Listen to God and Sent) is a summary of the weekly spiritual and personal disciplines we stress in our church and neighbor life.

• Be Generous- We challenge all church members to be tangibly generous to two people, one inside the faith, one person outside the faith

• Eat- Share a meal or coffee with one person outside the faith

• Listen to Christ- Pray/journal intentionally at least once a week about how the Gospel affects your everyday life

• Learn Christ- Read the Bible daily.

• Sent- journal/meditate weekly on what it means to be “sent” to Sioux City

Our prayer is that our church will be full of thoughts, prayers and discussions about new friendships they have developed, principles Jesus has taught them, and fresh, practical ways we can love our community to the glory of God and for the maturing of disciples.

In Christ, 

Richard

Sioux City, IA

We have unpacked the last box.  We are officially moved in and unless a natural disaster happens we will not be moving for a long time.  Every day our tiny little apartment feels more like home.  We will not mention that every nook and cranny has something shoved into it.  Open all closet doors with caution as items may have shifted during the “shoving in” stage.  Sometimes you just have to take a blow to the head for the sake of the Gospel.  

I am starting to learn my way around the city.  Siri has long abandoned me and has led me astray more than once.  She is absolutely no help and I am starting to believe she enjoys flustering me with her insistent “I can’t take any requests right now.” speech.  This has led to hours of aimlessly driving through the city.  I now know the city pretty well and have found some pretty nifty spots.  The biggest surprise was the library.  It is massive.  It has three floors and is just absolutely beautiful.  What is even more surprising is not only the amount of books but the number of homeless people who congregate in it.  Libraries are not the first place that pops into my head when I think of homeless people. This is the first library that I have been to that is located in a downtown area.  It makes sense that the homeless would congregate there.  It is free and warm.

Things we need prayer for:

·        God would raise up people for Redemption Hill

·        God would give us divine appointments with the lost

·        God would nurture and develop the friendships we have already made.

·        God would protect us spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially

·        God would protect our vehicles

·        God would prepare the hearts of those we will encounter

·        Pray for our neighbors.

In Christ,

Amber

We Are Here

The old Chinese saying is “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This week has begun a long and beautiful journey for Amber, Dusty and me. Amber drove the U-haul which contained 95% of our belongings, the most difficult part of the trip to Sioux City was maneuvering into the mighty storm that hit the Mid-South last week; the truck swayed and shook but Amber got us through Memphis, the states of Arkansas and Missouri and at about 1:30pm on Friday afternoon she triumphantly drove the into our apartment lot, in frigid Western Iowa with an intact PT Cruiser towed behind. The task of unpacking that huge truck and two vehicles remained but we were jubilant.

Even in spite of 95 degree heat, we were blessed to have friends in Hernando help pack our U-haul back in Mississippi, but we were unsure if we would have people in Sioux City to do the same. One of the churches in the Baptist Convention of Iowa, Southern Hills Baptist Church said it would ask its congregation to come to our apartment between 2:00 and 3:00 pm to help move us. By 3:00, however, no one was there, we still had a truck full of belongings and I had twisted my back- Amber was seriously considering tossing everything in a dumpster.

At 3:15, a van pulls up with a Nebraska tag, and a lady named Tess got out and said, “Richard? We are here to help!” Another van and car drove in minutes later. Thirteen people came. Our clothes, bed, nightstands, mirrors, kitchen goods and TWENTY NINE boxes of books were in our apartment within 45 minutes. An hour later, Jamie from the church even brought us sloppy joe’s and watermelon for supper. 

Church planting is hard work; we are in the fight of our lives, but we don’t fight alone.

Volunteers from Southern Hills Baptist Church. 

In Christ,

Richard Crowson